“I should like to help you, Weissberg, but I can’t. You must either sign that paper or formally refuse to sign it.”
I signed.
“Citizen Examiner,” I said, “may I ask you for a small favor? Please don’t leave me here in the brikhalovka till tomorrow; send me back at once.”
Weissband agreed, and he kept his word. A few minutes later a soldier came to take me back to Kholodnaya Cora. I was the only prisoner in the car. It was a warm, sunny, autumn day and the air did me good. The discussion with Weissband had upset me. I realized it now. For months I had been living in a small world of my own, and even my thoughts had very seldom left it. The talk about my wife had opened a door, and a strange enchanted light streamed through it—Europe, freedom.
I thought of her. Perhaps she was now recuperating in Grundlsee at the foot of the mountains we both loved so much. Had she forgotten us here? I had not slept for three nights, and now I slid into daydreams. I saw her slim figure walking along the coastal road of the Côte d’Azur. The picture changed. She was leaning against the sea rail and her jet-black hair contrasted with the sparkling blue of the sea. She laughed and I saw her white teeth. She held her head a little lowered and looked up with her large eyes as she had so often done. She seemed near enough to me to touch.
And now she was living among people who could still laugh happily, and life was there to enjoy once again. I felt no envy and no bitterness, and I was even glad that my efforts to save her the year before had not been in vain.
Why had she sent me that letter now? Did she want to marry Georg? Or did she just want to let me know that she was in freedom? Perhaps the divorce proceedings were the only means of breaking through the prison walls.
I must have been absent in manner when I entered the cell. The others noticed it, and Komarovsky drew me to one side.
“What’s the matter, Alexander Semyonovitch?” he asked. “You look so strange.”
“What do you mean, strange?”
“Somehow you look serene. Have they promised to release you?”
“No, not that, but I’ve just discovered that my wife is free and already out of the country. She wants a divorce, and I had to give my brother in Vienna, who is a lawyer, power of attorney for the proceedings. She probably sent the letter through the Austrian Embassy, and so the G.P.U. was compelled to let me see it and give an answer.”
He put a friendly hand on my shoulder.
“Are you very unhappy, Alexander Semyonovitch?”
“Not at all. You see, we’ve been separated for years now, but we’ve remained good friends.”
Makedon had overheard us.
“What do you want to tell us stories like that for? So she’s left you in the lurch and now she wants to marry someone else.”
I was not irritated by his gruffness.
“No, you’re quite wrong, Makedon. Even if I were free I shouldn’t go back to her. But that doesn’t stop us from helping each other if we can. It’s not even quite certain that my wife does want to marry again. This divorce business may have been the only way of letting me know that she is free.
Boiko spoke.
“Tell us about your wife, Alexander Semyonovitch. How you met and how you came to be here.”
The prisoners often talked about their wives. It seemed to help them forget their own troubles, the constant pressure of the examiners, and the never-ending struggle for a little more soup or tobacco.
November 7, 1937, approached, the twentieth anniversary of the Russian Revolution, and, of course, there were all sorts of rumors about a coming amnesty: all prisoners on remand were to be released; all convicted prisoners were to have their sentences reduced by half, and so on. Prisoners returning from the brikhalovka spoke importantly of the coming changes. I didn’t really believe a word of it but I couldn’t help catching the optimistic spirit.
On November 4th, 5th and 6th the cells were searched with painstaking care. We all had to strip, leave our clothes behind in the cell and wait naked in the corridor, while five warders searched the cell from top to bottom, carefully examining each article of clothing. After that they examined us, looking into each physical orifice with close attention. Nevertheless I succeeded in saving a needle and a stump of pencil. The pencil I managed to conceal in my mouth. The needle had become almost something sacred for me and I had rescued it through every search. It was used not only by our cell, but by all the other cells on our floor. When others needed it I left it in an agreed place in the lavatory. The prison authorities were not concerned about our rags. Without our precious needle we should have been unable to repair anything. The situation got very bad once it was forbidden to receive clean linen.
Six months later I lost that needle. I was repairing a shirt when we were called out for exercise. Absent-mindedly I just stuck it into my lapel and went off to the yard. The warder whose job it was to control us as we passed failed to notice it, but one of the prisoners did and he whispered a warning. The thought of losing my precious needle gave me a shock and I made a hurried movement to hide it. Unfortunately, the warder noticed my movement and called me out, and I had to surrender it.
When I got back to the cell and my fellow prisoners discovered what had happened they heaped reproaches on me. Makedon overdid it as usual and provoked me to indignation.
“Whose needle was it anyhow? I can do what I like with my own things, I suppose? I managed to keep that needle for eighteen months. Who else would have succeeded in doing it?”
It was the wrong attitude to take, of course, but Makedon had irritated me. In prison things like needles and pencils are common property and ought to be preserved as such. But necessity is the mother of invention and later on we learned to make needles out of the fish bones we found in the soup. They were carefully pointed at one end and a hole was bored through the other. At first it was difficult to know what to do the boring with, but then we found a piece of copper wire which served.
Our clothes suffered in particular from the periodic disinfecting. Every two weeks we had to leave our cell to go to the washroom, taking everything with us. There we had to undress and pile everything into a heap. Food, in particular fats, could be handed to a warder. The heap was then shoveled into the steam. After we had washed we received back a heap of steaming hot clothing. There were often as many as two hundred prisoners in one cell, and they were taken off to the washroom in batches of fifty at a time. The problem of finding the right clothes afterward was almost insoluble. There were squabbles, particularly about the socks, for hours. And handkerchiefs were hopeless. It was sometimes days before prisoners in a mass cell calmed down after these ordeals.
These ruthless disinfections made us furious, but owing to the overcrowding the authorities had very little choice. If they hoped to prevent epidemics then they had to see that each prisoner got a bath at least once a fortnight. Under the Tsar the prison had been built for a maximum of eight hundred inmates, and, of course, the washing accommodations were adequate only for that number, but in 1937 there were twelve thousand prisoners in this one prison. The washing facilities were in use day and night, and all the authorities were interested in was the prevention of epidemics. On one occasion when the washroom was out of action for repairs for several weeks we all got so lousy that the examiners wouldn’t let us go anywhere near their desks. The constant disinfections plagued us, but they probably saved the lives of many of us.
During the searches before the anniversary of the revolution the warders confiscated every scrap of red they could find—red handkerchiefs, red ribbon, and even a piece of red packing paper. We wondered why.
“It’s quite simple,” declared Makedon. “They want to prevent any counterrevolutionary demonstrations on November 7th.”
“What do you mean, Makedon? You can’t make counterrevolutionary demonstrations with red flags. You’d have to get hold of swastika flags or something.”
“No,” he insisted. “If anyone stuck a red flag out of the window in prison it w
ould be a counterrevolutionary demonstration.”
“But if there were any counterrevolutionaries here they wouldn’t use red flags to demonstrate with.”
“How the hell should I know what bandits like that would do? In any case there mustn’t be any demonstrations in prison.”
“Use your head, Makedon. Now supposing Hitler’s S.S. searched the cells of imprisoned Communists on the eve of the anniversary of Hitler’s seizure of power. What do you think they’d confiscate? Swastika flags? Certainly not. They’d look for red flags. They wouldn’t be afraid that a German Communist would go demonstrating with a swastika flag, now would they? So when the G.P.U. comes looking for red flags here it’s an admission that we’re not counterrevolutionaries but revolutionaries for whom the anniversary of the revolution is every bit as sacred as it is to them. Now do you understand at last?”
No one said a word. The others were all in agreement with me in their hearts, but the discussion had slid onto very dangerous ground.
“How do I know what the devil you are, Weissberg?” said Make-don angrily. “Perhaps you really are a terrorist and a foreign spy. I can’t stand up for anybody here but myself. I don’t know what all the others have been up to, do I? The G.P.U. will know what it’s up to, I expect.”
Makedon was getting angrier and angrier, and becoming unpleasant, so I let the discussion drop.
The anniversary of the revolution arrived, but not the long-awaited amnesty. Even I had expected perhaps a better meal on the great day, but there was just cabbage soup without the slightest trace of fat in it. And there was no exercise that day. It was forbidden to sing, but we ignored the prohibition and celebrated the anniversary by singing all the old revolutionary songs. There were tears in the eyes of some of us. We sang softly but the warders noticed it. However, they did not interfere.
As far as money was concerned I was well off. I now had enough to last me for a year, even longer if I was economical. From the clean linen that was sent at the beginning of November I noticed that my mother-in-law was at home. Among other things I received a pair of fur gloves. That made me think. Did Laura Mikhailovna imagine I would wear gloves in my cell? Or did it mean they had reason to believe I was going to be deported to the Far North? It was not a pleasant thought. Later on the mystery was solved. There was a note hidden in the lining.
I was anxious to let her know what steps she should take. After my wife’s arrest we had discussed what could be done, and her mother had got into touch with a number of people, including a foreign correspondent of the Viennese Neue Freie Presse, an engineer named Nicholas Basseches. He was a well-informed man and he gave her advice which she ignored. Now it seemed to me desirable to adopt the course he had recommended.
I considered the problem of how to get into touch with her and then I decided to stitch the name Basseches into my shirt at the place where the monogram is. I hoped that as it would be in Latin letters, which the warders did not understand, they might mistake it for my own name. I did this and a week later I received the shirt back. The name had been removed. At the time I did not know whether the prison authorities had removed it or my mother-in-law. Ten years later I discovered that my mother-in-law had seen the name and removed it, but as she had long ago forgotten her talk with the foreign journalist she had assumed that Basseches had been the cause of my arrest.
Most of my fellow prisoners had now completed the examination process, and in the second half of November they began to leave for the various camps. The most difficult parting was with Boiko, whom I had begun to teach mathematics and physics. The wall in front of the cell window was painted black and sloped back at an angle of about 45 degrees. It made an ideal blackboard. I made my own chalk. I broke pieces of the plaster out of the wall, crumbled it up into powder and made a thick paste with water. Then I formed it into oblong pieces and let it dry. I never used better chalk than this in my life. Perhaps it wasn’t hard enough to be a commercial proposition, but with a little care it was perfect in use. Boiko was the sort of pupil all teachers dream of: intelligent, attentive and grateful. He repaid me by giving me long lectures on Soviet agriculture.
And there was Kaganovitch. One morning the cell door opened and a warder came for him: “With things.”
Everyone knew then that it was not just another examination; Kaganovitch was going off to camp. None of these men were ever brought before a court. They were sentenced in their absence by an administrative commission in Moscow, the so-called “OSO” (Special Commission of the People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs), which consisted of a representative of the Public Prosecutor, a representative of the Commissar and a permanent secretary. Requests for administrative sentences poured into the Lubyanka offices of OSO from examiners all over the country. Very few cases were examined on their merits. That would have been a physical impossibility. There were too many of them. Thousands of sentences were passed daily, and the activity of OSO was practically confined to the work of its permanent secretary, who ceaselessly stamped the sentences. Up to the autumn of 1937 the heaviest sentence OSO could impose was five years in a concentration camp. Later on when the maximum prison sentence was raised to twenty-five years the OSO was also permitted to impose longer sentences. Incidentally, we learned later that it didn’t matter what sentence a prisoner received, he was never automatically released after serving it, but only on special instructions from the G.P.U. in Moscow, and such instructions were very rarely issued. What usually happened was that on the day before a prisoner’s term ended he was called into the commandant’s office and handed a document from the OSO sentencing him to another five or ten years.
Occasionally the OSO would deal with a case on its merits but that was a very rare occurrence, and it happened only when there had been influential intervention, or in the case of foreigners. My wife’s case was one. Vishinsky himself had sent the case to the OSO, asking for deportation from the Soviet Union.
So Kaganovitch, our starosta, had to go. He rose and began to pack up his few things carefully, talking all the time.
“The devil take them. What an idiot I was! I thought they were going to leave me here. But they’ll still need me. You can bet your boots on that. I shall come back. All you’ve got to do is to keep your health and strength.”
When I looked at his broad shoulders and his ham-like fists I thought he would probably find it easy enough. He dressed himself warmly and tied up his bundle. First he embraced Komarovsky, and then he took me by both hands to say good-by and there were tears in his eyes.
“Alexander Semyonovitch,” he declared solemnly, “if you’re still in this country when I come back, we’ll have a drink on it. They won’t get me under so easily.”
At the cell door he looked round, laughing and crying at the same time.
“The devil take them all,” he said. “They’ll need me again. And they’ll need you too, all of you. Don’t get downhearted.”
The door closed behind him.
As we now needed a new starosta, someone proposed Komarovsky, but he refused and suggested Makedon. It seemed a strange proposal, but, as he explained to me afterward, Makedon would probably be much more tolerable if his ambition were satisfied. But the peasants were unwilling to have Makedon; they wanted to elect me. The matter was left open. In the following days so many went off on their travels that a starosta, or cell senior, became unnecessary. The institution of starosta, or cell senior, was quite unofficial, because it presupposed an organization among the prisoners, and that was illegal. The Soviet Constitution laid down the number and character of permitted organizations: the Communist Party, the labor unions, the Soviets, economic institutions, cultural organizations and the Red Army. That was all, and the monopoly was very jealously guarded.
It had been established soon after the seizure of power. The vessel of power was the All-Russia Congress of Worker, Peasant and Soldier Soviets, which elected the first Soviet Government. At that time Lenin had no intention of suppressing all other parties,
and, in fact, the first Soviet Government was a coalition of the Bolsheviki and the left-wing Social Revolutionaries. The Bolsheviki waited for the results of the elections to the Constituent National Assembly, and Lenin was quite convinced that they would give him and his allies a majority. All political parties were allowed to take part and put forward their candidates. But when the expected majority for the Bolsheviki and their allies the left-wing Social Revolutionaries did not materialize, the Bolsheviki dissolved the National Assembly and proclaimed all power to the Soviets. They ignored the wishes of the majority of the people, but they were firmly convinced that they were acting in the interests of that majority even if it failed to realize it at the time. They upheld the right of revolution against democracy, and proclaimed the dictatorship of the proletariat against the power of a parliament.
After the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk the Social Revolutionaries left the Government in protest and went underground. They assassinated the German Governor-General of Kiev, Field Marshal Eichhorn, and they assassinated the German Ambassador in Moscow, Count Mirbach. From then on the bourgeois parties and the reformist working-class parties were liquidated step by step. However, the process was quite a long one, and if my memory serves me right it ended only in 1923 with the dissolution of the Zionists.
Now, although it had become illegal to form other parties, it was not illegal to organize groups within the Bolshevik Party, and all trends were at liberty to express their opinions. Despite the tremendous authority Lenin enjoyed, it was no easy matter for him to obtain a majority for the ratification of the Brest-Litovsk Treaty. But although the very existence of the young Soviet Republic was at stake, Lenin refused to use the power of the Cheka (Extraordinary Commission for the Combating of Counter-revolution) to intimidate the opposition. At that time the Cheka was an instrument of the Party, and not vice versa as it is today.
Thus the present totalitarian Soviet state is only partly a result of the first revolutionary years. It was reached by three great stages: the destruction of the opposition, collectivization, and the Great Purge. After that, as Stalin gleefully announced, the Party was monolithic. Absolute unanimity was guaranteed.
The Accused Page 45